world of appearances. The concepts of which physical science makes use lend themselves perfectly to the determination of limited phenomena, but lead to contradictions when we attempt to use them to express the true essence of reality; they are relative concepts, characterising things in relation to and in comparison with other things, but they can tell us nothing of the terms of those relations; they are working ideas, which are of no theoretical importance, but have only the value of useful fictions, practical compromises.[1] Bradley starts from the principle of contradiction,[2] which he regards as the supreme criterion of every reality, and, acting on the strength of this, the one and only article of his logical code, considers himself entitled to administer summary justice to all scientific concepts and intellectual categories — substance, quality, relation, space, time, movement, change, causality, force, activity — which from his point of view imply contradictions and hence cannot correspond to anything real. Let us, for example, consider the relation between the thing and its properties: its substance is not identical with any one of them; what is it then? Merely a link connecting its qualities; but what do we mean by the assertion that one quality is related to another? Neither of them is identical with the other or with the relation to the other; thus the number of contradictions is augmented rather than diminished. Quality does not exist apart from relations, but relation in its turn is not conceivable except as existing between qualitative terms: on the one hand, it would appear that quality is the result of relations, since qualitative difference cannot exist apart from a process of distinction; on the other, it would appear that relations in their ultimate analysis are forms of quality. Nor is it of any avail to draw a distinction between two elements in a quality, one pre-existent to the relation, and rendering that relation possible; the other resulting from the relation itself; since we should have to explain the mutual relation of these two elements, both belonging to one
- ↑ Appearance and Reality, p. 284.
- ↑ “Ultimate reality is such that it does not contradict itself: here is absolute criterion” (op. cit. p. 136 ff.).
